Our
new President’s personal story has been told often and well,
both by himself and others. The same is not true of the outgoing
President, George W. Bush. I will attempt to fill in the blanks from
scattered pieces of information.

My
idea of a story has to do with the relationship between President
Bush and his father, the 41st
President. The elder Bush had a lackluster record as an
elected official. After he lost an election to U.S. Senate to Lloyd Bentsen
in 1966, the politically liberal chaplain at Yale University, William Sloane
Coffin, told George W. Bush that “the better man had won.” It
was an insult that remained lodged in the younger Bush’s memory, confirming
his identity as a Texas conservative.

George
H.W. Bush was appointed to various important positions in the Nixon
and Ford administrations. His political
fortune was made when Ronald Reagan
picked him as a vice presidential running mate in 1980 despite misgivings
that Bush was tough enough for the job. Reagan’s attitude was formed,
in part, from an experience during the 1980 New Hampshire primary in which
the Bush
forces tried to exclude other candidates from a debate. When a moderator
tried to cut off Reagan’s microphone, Reagan angrily noted that he
had paid for it and had the power restored. George Bush looked comparatively
weak.

Vice
President Bush served loyally in the Reagan administration for eight
years. Though a logical choice to become Reagan’s successor,
he faced a formidable challenge from Senator Bob Dole. The main challenge
was to demonstrate Bush’s
masculine toughness. Dole was a wounded veteran from World War II. Though
George Bush also was a veteran of combat, he had an elitist image. Son
of a former
U.S. Senator from Connecticut, Bush was a man, said Texas Governor Ann
Richardson, who was “born with a silver spoon in his mouth.” This
would not sit well with many voters. George Bush was too preppy. He used
phrases like “being
in deep doo doo.” In short, he was a wimp.

Enter
Lee Atwater, Bush’s
campaign manager. Audacity was his middle name. Atwater was a poor
white boy from South Carolina who had joined Senator Strom
Thurmond’s staff and then clawed his way into positions with
the Reagan and Bush campaign. Atwater’s specialty was dirty tricks,
often with a racial theme. A man of immense charm and good looks, he
knew how to play the
liberal media like a fiddle. He set to work remaking George Bush’s
image, assisted by his disciple, Karl Rove, and the Vice President’s
eldest son, George W. Bush.

To
beef up the candidate’s masculine
image, Atwater had Bush photographed while driving a double-rig trailer
truck. Even more daring, George Bush ambushed
Dan Rather during an interview. The other part of the game was to
make Bush’s
Democratic opponent, Governor Michael Dukakis, look weak. Bush ads
ridiculed the Massachusetts Governor when he was photographed in
the cockpit of a tank.
Dukakis fell further into the trap when, asked how he would respond
to his wife’s being raped, he failed to express the appropriate
anger. But Atwater’s
masterpiece was the “Willie Horton” ad. Dukakis had permitted
a convicted murderer to receive weekend passes and this man had used
the opportunity
to commit further crimes. A photograph of Horton showed clearly that
this was a black man. Dukakis was soft on such persons.

George
Bush, who had once trailed Dukakis by double digits in the polls,
was elected
President in November 1988 thanks to Atwater’s image-making
magic. At the inaugural ball, Lee Atwater entertained the crowd
on a banjo while the
President himself danced to the music. Clearly, Bush owed his election
to this audacious alley cat from the South. Atwater then became
chairman of the Republican
National Committee. Not long afterwards, Atwater contracted cancer.
After months of treatment, he grew fat and ugly. Then a remarkable
thing happened. Atwater
became remorseful over his past dealings. Before his death, he
contacted many of his former adversaries, including Willie Horton,
begging
forgiveness.

I
suspect that Lee Atwater was the political guru who made George W.
Bush what he later became. He would become the self-styled
political
heavy,
who made
the tough decisions without regard to what other people thought.
George
W. willingly played the “bad cop” when it suited
his weak-kneed father’s
interests. For instance, it was the President’s son, rather
than the President himself, who fired John Sununu as the White
House chief of staff.
When this son later became elected Governor of Texas, he burnished
his “tough
guy” image by failing to commute the sentences of any death-row
inmates. As his political wizardry had made the 41st President,
Lee Atwater also was
the one who gave the younger Bush an identity.

Thanks
to continuing good will toward former President Bush and his wife
Barbara,
Republican leaders backed the nomination of
George W. Bush for
President in
2000. He was elected by a narrow margin. The defining moment
of the
Bush presidency came on September 11, 2001. The President had
to look and
act tough; it was
a part that he knew how to play. The critical decision of the
Bush presidency was, of course, the invasion of Iraq based
on false
assertions that “weapons
of mass destruction” were to be found there.

What
really happened? The proximate cause of the invasion was a group
of
politically influential individuals called the “neo-cons”,
including journalists and civilian advisers in the Defense
Department. The most influential was Paul
Wolfowitz, Secretary Rumsfeld’s deputy at the Department
of Defense. These neo-cons had supported a more aggressive
policy against the Iraqi government
of Saddam Hussein during Bill Clinton’s presidency
culminating in the passage of the “Iraq Liberation
Act of 1998”,
which called for “regime
change”. An organization called “Project for
the New American Century” argued
that the United States, the world’s only superpower,
should project its values throughout the world by military
force.

It
was this group of neocons that stood poised to take advantage of
the crisis created on September 11th. The
American people
could now
be made
to rally
in support of an Iraq invasion if a plausible pretext existed.
The existence of “weapons
of mass destruction” in Iraq, despite UN inspections,
and alleged contact between an Iraqi security official
and one of the hijackers provided this pretext.

Considering
that many of the neo-cons were Jews, it has
been argued that this group was motivated primarily by
a desire
to enhance
Israel’s security.
Even if the weapons of mass destruction existed, Saddam
Hussein posed little direct threat to the United States
which was well out of range of Iraqi missiles.
However, he did pose a threat to Israel. In response
to a potential threat, Israeli pilots had bombed and
destroyed
Iraq’s nuclear reactor in the
mid 1980s; and Israeli security agents had assassinated
scientists working for Iraq. However, George W. Bush
was not Jewish. Neither were Dick Cheney
or Donald Rumsfeld. How did the neocons manage to persuade
them to carry out a risky project that would mainly benefit
Israel?

President
Bush was the key decision maker. There have been many and various
speculations about this. Certainly,
the
younger Bush
bore
a grudge against
Saddam Hussein for having attempted to kill his father
during a visit to Kuwait. He and others regretted that,
in the aftermath
of the
Persian Gulf
war, thousands
of Iraqis had been slaughtered because the United States
failed to follow up its military victory by overthrowing
the government
in
Baghdad. Gaining
access
to Iraqi oil was another motivation. A later explanation
was that
the United States was interested in spreading “freedom
and democracy” throughout
the Middle East and the world, even by force of arms.

The
Jewish connection is, perhaps, most plausible. George
W. Bush was a devout Christian. He belonged
to a type
of evangelical
Christian
that no
longer
regarded Jews a “Christ-killers” but,
instead, as a people mentioned in the Book of Revelation
who
would be converted to Christianity in the final
days. Hostile kingdoms, including presumably ones
given over to Islam, would attack the Jews in Israel,
led
by the Anti-Christ. Then, when the crisis became
most difficult, Jesus would return to earth to defeat
these forces and establish God’s kingdom.

In
this scenario of events, anyone supporting the
state of Israel would be playing a positive role.
Did the
Bible not
say that
God would bless
whoever
blessed the Jews and God would execrate those who
cursed the Jews? Biblically well-informed Christians
would
know where
they should
stand with respect
to protecting Israel. Personally, George W. Bush
may also have admired the tough
Israeli security forces.

However,
there has also been plausible speculation related to George W. Bush’s
presidential aspirations. A “great president” is
necessarily one like Abraham Lincoln or Franklin
D. Roosevelt who serves during war time. George
W. Bush admitted this to his campaign biographer
in so many words. According to the biographer,
Mickey Herkowitz, he said: “ One of the
keys to being seen as a great leader is to be
seen as a commander-in-chief ... My father had
all this political capital built up when he drove
the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it ...
If I had that much capital, I’m not going
to waste it. I’m going to get everything
passed that I want to get passed and I’m
going to have a successful presidency.”

A
report in Salon.com provides another glimpse
into influences upon President Bush. On February
28, 2007, the President held a “literary
luncheon” in the White House to honor historian
Andrew Roberts, author of a book praising British
and American imperialism that was titled “History
of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900”.
The guest list of fifteen included prominent
neo-cons. The theme of this conference was
to explore the “lessons of history”.

The
first lesson was that the U.S. government
should be primarily concerned with its relations
with
governments of other English-speaking
nations
and not worry what the other nations think.
Second, the President should absolutely
refuse to set a deadline for the withdrawal
of U.S. troops from Iraq. When the British
set a
deadline in India,
more
than 700,000
people
were slaughtered.
The lesson of history is that great empires
collapse because, under pressure, they lack
the will to
power.
Democracies
are especially
prone to this
weakness. When war casualties mount, the
public clamors for an end to the war. A
great leader can avert catastrophe by remaining
steadfast under pressure.

Another
thing: The administration should not “hesitate to intern our
enemies for long, indefinite periods of
time. That policy worked in Ireland and during World War II. Release
should
only follow victory. In the mind of
Andrew Roberts, ‘appeasement’ is
the main trap that the President should
avoid. ‘We’re
fighting an enemy that cannot be appeased;
were that possible, the French would already
have done it,’ quipped Roberts.
The President chuckled at this witticism.”

On
a more serious note, “the neoconservatives
left Bush with an overarching instruction
- namely, the only thing that he should
concern himself with, the
only thing that really matters, is Iran.
Forget every other issue - the welfare
of the American people, every other region
around the world - except the one
that matters most. Roberts said that
history would judge the president on
whether he
had prevented the nuclearization of the
Middle East. If Iran gets the bomb,
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other countries
will follow.”

Winston
Churchill is one of the neo-cons' principal icons.
In Britain’s
darkest hour, this great prime minister
stood up to Nazi power and, with much
grit and determination, prevailed.
A witness to the luncheon told Salon.com
that “the president confided
to Roberts that he believes he has
an advantage
over Churchill ... He has faith in
God, Bush explained, but Churchill,
an agnostic,
did not. Because he believes in God,
it is easier for him to make decisions
and stick to them than it was for Churchill.
Bush said he doesn’t worry,
or feel alone, or care if he is unpopular.
He has God.”

The
picture we get from this is of a group of sycophants
playing upon
President
Bush’s presidential vanity
and, of course, upon his religion.
Bush
needed to “stay the course” despite
the evident suffering generated by
the Iraq war and its resulting unpopularity.
Great presidents remain steadfast
in the face of (other peoples’)
adversity. Being a Christian who
was friendly to Jews and to Israel’s
interests, President Bush also enjoyed
divine favor. And we also had eminent
historians and neocon intellectuals
telling Bush that the “lesson
of history” favored what he
was already doing. How could he fail
to
heed their advice? President Bush
was, after all, a “tough
guy” who followed his own inner
compass and the beguiling voices
of flattery.

The
irony is that President Bush’s own father, the 41st
president, and his national-security
advisers were opposed to the Iraq
invasion. The elder
Bush, the “wimp” who
had actually served in combat,
was comparatively cautious about
wars.
When asked about this, the younger
Bush said that he was
listening not to his biological
father but to his “higher
father” or
to the heavenly father as communicated
by politically motivated Jews and
Christians whispering in his ear.

The
Iraq invasion took place in April
2003. The quick military
victory
was followed
by a costly
occupation
lasting through
the end of Bush’s second
term. Yes, George W. Bush had
outdone his father in several
respects:
First, he had acted decisively
to end the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Second, he had
been reelected. But, as events
dragged on during his second
term of office, the younger Bush,
I
think, began to see things in
a different light, though
he never admitted it in public.

The
continuing casualties from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
resurgence of the
Taliban,
failure
to capture Osama
bin Laden, plummeting
poll numbers, huge budget deficits,
a crash of credit markets,
and finally
the two
shoes hurled
at him at a news conference
in Baghdad to cheering audiences
around the
world could not have failed
to have an impact
on the President’s mood
and thinking. Maybe his earthly
father was not such a loser
after all.

I
think that a significant part of the story of the Bush
presidency
may have
taken place
in the
President’s own mind.
What tangible evidence is
there for that belief? First,
the
expected U.S. military attack
on Iran, which had seemed
likely in 2006 and the next
two years,
never took place. Shortly
before President Bush left
office,
it was disclosed that President
Bush denied Israel’s
secret request for bunker-busting
bombs that could be dropped
on Iran’s
nuclear facilities. He also
denied Israeli requests to
fly over Iraq to reach the
Iranian uranium enrichment
plant at Natanz. His administration
did, however,
assure Israel that covert
action was being taken against
Iran’s
nuclear program.

Second,
at the tail end of his
presidency, George W.
Bush honored
his earthly
father in a most
conspicuous way. On
January 10,
2009, the
younger Bush
was on hand, along with
his parents and other honored
guests, to
help dedicate U.S.S. George
H. W. Bush,
a nuclear-powered
aircraft
carrier,
in Norfolk,
Virginia. The President
told the assembled audience that
his father,
the former
president, was “an
awesome man” (a phrase
usually reserved for God)
who had received many blessings
in life and now this, an
aircraft carrier. The 84-year-old
former president described
the ship as “the
last big thing in my life."

And
so the humbled president,
his attention now focused
on legacy,
had made a certain
peace with
his father.
Ten days
later, he
graciously turned
over
the reins of government
to his Democratic successor,
Barack Obama, and then
flew back to Texas to
establish a presidential
library
and write
his memoirs.